Freight forwarder accepts goods at a loss? Seller receives 20 sales calls a day

The shipment volume of cross-border e-commerce sellers has dropped sharply, and many sellers have reported that they have been "bombarded" by sales calls from freight forwarders. Freight forwarders are also in a difficult situation, and they bluntly stated that there is a serious shortage of goods in the market. Some of their peers even receive goods at a loss, and they dare not leave work because they have no performance.

Many sellers are "bombarded" by freight forwarders' sales calls

Recently, many sellers reported that they received sales calls from freight forwarders every day, ranging from a few to more than a dozen. Some sellers even received twenty calls from freight forwarders in one day.

A seller said that he had received more than ten calls from freight forwarders today, including numbers from Shenzhen, Shanghai, Henan, Yiwu ... Another seller felt the same way, saying that he basically did not receive any calls from freight forwarders last year, but this year sometimes he received four or five calls a day.

According to the sellers, after the call was connected, most of these freight forwarders directly introduced the business without considering the sellers' needs at all, which was disgusting.

Not only online sales, some sellers said they encounter freight forwarders visiting their stores every day. One seller said: "Now there are seven or eight freight forwarders coming to our company every day. I am so tired that I don't have the mood to entertain them."

“For every Weibo post or short video about Amazon, the comment section is almost completely dominated by a list of freight forwarders. It feels like there are more freight forwarding companies than sellers on Amazon!” lamented an industry insider.

Many sellers are disgusted by the freight forwarders’ online phone “bombing” and offline door-to-door sales promotion. They say frankly: they don’t like salesmen who sell directly.

“Many freight forwarders selling goods are unprofessional. Most of them just leave after advertising. I want to know more about logistics issues, but no one can answer me.” said seller M.

Seller L agreed, saying that most freight forwarders who directly promote their business are doing useless work, and if they try too hard, it can backfire. Most freight forwarders do not have basic professional knowledge and service awareness, so the conversion rate is naturally low .

Selling is easy to be offensive, what kind of method do sellers accept? Freight forwarders may wish to listen to the suggestions of customers.

It is recommended that freight forwarders can print some calendars at low cost, add their own QR codes on them, deliver them and leave without disturbing them too much; if you add customers on WeChat, don’t just post advertisements all day long, but post more professional knowledge related to logistics. If some of the content can help people, customers may try to place a ticket. An old seller gave this advice.

In fact, for many sellers, if they have a long-term freight forwarder, they will not easily change the freight forwarder. Even if the new freight forwarder's quotation is slightly lower, sellers will only use it as a backup, and in the end they will give up because of concerns about unstable shipping channels, delayed logistics time and other issues.

Imagine which seller who has been doing cross-border business for several years does not have a stable logistics channel? Therefore, when promoting business, freight forwarders can pay more attention to new sellers, develop new customers, provide them with competitive prices, and give reasonable shipping suggestions, so as to gradually increase trust and accumulate customers.

The premise of steadily accumulating customers is to gain recognition. A seller praised the freight forwarder he cooperated with: "The first freight forwarder we cooperated with was very careful in doing things. Every time we asked them about freight-related knowledge, they knew everything, which helped us avoid many pitfalls. They proactively told us about the operator's mistakes, customs declaration problems, and delays of 2-3 days. I didn't need to ask them proactively, and they knew the situation in my mind."

The market is out of stock, and the freight forwarder said: I dare not leave work without sales

The hunger sales of freight forwarders reflects a cruel reality: sellers are currently shipping insufficient goods and the market is out of stock. Many sellers in the industry believe that: "We don't have orders, so it's impossible to ship in large quantities. Moreover, some of our peers are busy streamlining their product lines after the New Year to ensure that they will not suffer losses. In the final analysis, there is no demand.

The sellers' shipment volume has dropped sharply, so the freight forwarders naturally cannot get the goods. In the sellers' words, we were the ones who had to fight internally before, and now it is the freight forwarders' turn, and they should also fight internally.

There is a general shortage of goods in the market at present, and freight forwarders are also feeling the effects of this situation.

" There are fewer shipments in the market now, and no one wants to have empty containers, so we look for customers everywhere every day. Recently, some of our peers have gone to old customers to ask for goods at low prices, and some have even offered low prices to lure customers away . " Freight forwarder D seemed a little helpless.

Logistics practitioner M introduced that we also entered the market. As the sellers’ business was not good, the demand for logistics naturally decreased.

Since the beginning of the year, the overall demand in the industry has decreased significantly, the market volume is not good, and some freight forwarders are accepting goods at low prices or at a loss. This is the feedback from multiple freight forwarders based on the current situation.

Freight forwarder Mr. Y said that the current market situation has a great impact on the entire e-commerce logistics. Freight forwarders made money by taking cabinets last year. In order to make profits, many companies took too many cabinets this year, and if they can't receive the goods, they will reduce the price. If the market shipment volume does not increase in the next two months, many freight forwarding companies may breach the contract with shipping companies.

Will the market situation improve in two months? Old Y is not optimistic about this.

As a logistics practitioner, he said that after the Chinese New Year, he saw that some sellers were almost unable to hold on. Those that should have closed down did so, and those that had not closed down were also reducing their scale. The basis for a large shipment volume is that all seller companies can operate normally. In this situation, it is difficult to restore the shipment volume.

In view of the current situation, several freight forwarders have analyzed from various aspects. They generally believe that the sharp drop in shipments and customer loss are mainly due to the following reasons:

1. European and American countries have relaxed their vigilance against the epidemic, offline consumption demand has increased, and online business has been impacted, affecting the orders of cross-border sellers;

2. The epidemic has affected productivity. After the Chinese New Year, epidemics broke out in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Quanzhou, Dongguan and other places. These areas are gathering places for cross-border sellers and sellers' supply chains. Some areas have been closed one after another, which has affected the productivity of factories and brought shocks to sellers' supply chains, thus affecting the logistics industry;

3. New entrants compete with low prices. Due to rising logistics prices, many people blindly entered the freight forwarding industry with low barriers last year. Newcomers have lower costs and pursue a low-price model to attract new customers. This lowered market prices and exacerbated the internal competition in the freight forwarding industry.

With the decrease in demand and the intensification of competition, freight forwarders are not having an easy time! Many freight forwarders said that they must work harder to expand their customer base, so they will diligently visit customers or contact customers online, and look forward to customers shipping every day, but the reality is often not satisfactory. One freight forwarder said that his performance was so poor that he would avoid his boss and dared not leave work normally every day.

In 2022, the international logistics industry may face a storm. A freight forwarder revealed that some of its peers could no longer bear it, especially in April. A reshuffle may come soon, and those freight forwarders or scalpers in the grassroots stage will basically be shuffled out.

Cross-border e-commerce

out of stock

Freight Forwarding